The world of snack chips includes a wide variety of base materials, including, for example, potatoes, corn, taro, sweet potatoes and cheese, to name a few. Prior to the present invention, however, the use of rice as the primary base material for a snack chip has eluded the snack food industry.
In order for a snack chip to be commercially successful, it must taste good, look good, feel good when eaten and be capable of large scale production. The look good and feel good features usually translate into the chip having a structure that keeps the chip from crumbling during processing, packaging, transport or use (prior to reaching a mouth). Further, the structure of the chip wants to give it a fresh “crunchability” when eaten. The look good feature translates into the chip having a toasted appearance that is usually associated with crunchiness.
Some of the difficulties in using rice as a base material for a snack chip are that it does not naturally acquire a toasted appearance, it tends to crumble easily and is sticky when cooked and made into a dough, making it unusable with existing machinery commonly used to make chips from other base materials.
By the use of different forms of rice, the present invention overcomes these problems and produces a tasty snack chip that has desirable characteristics and necessary structural integrity.